Abstract: An entity provides a competitive block list for one or more of its objects in a social networking system. The competitive block list identifies advertisers or other entities prevented from targeting advertisements based on connections between users and objects of the entity. If a later received advertisement is targeted based on a connection between a user and an object of the entity, the social networking system determines whether the advertiser associated with the advertisement is included on the competitive block list. If the competitive block list includes the advertiser, the advertisement is determined not to be valid, and not presented to users. Otherwise, the advertisement is determined to be valid, and may be presented to users thereafter.

Abstract: Merchants create ecommerce-enabled ad units advertising items offered by the merchants. The ad units contain functionality enabling customers to purchase the items by interacting with the ad units. The ad units have associated bid prices that the merchants agree to pay for sales through the ad units. The merchants provide the ad units to a broker. The broker publishes the ad units on web pages provided by publishers as comparison shop ad units that contain multiple ad units and functionality for navigating among them. A customer receiving a web page interacts with an ad unit to purchase the item. During the interactions, the broker dynamically updates the ad unit to conduct the transaction.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for presenting advertisements. In one aspect, audiovisual content is presented to a user. An indicator is presented together with the audiovisual content to the user. The indicator is associated with one or more tags. Input selecting the indicator is received from the user. An advertisement, associated with the indicator and dynamically selected based at least in part on one or more of the tags, is presented to the user.

Abstract: A shadow ad can be evaluated by receiving an ad request, identifying at least one shadow ad and at least one actual ad based on the received ad request, generating an ad ranking by analyzing one or more criteria associated with the identified at least one shadow ad and the at least one actual ad, and selecting one or more of the identified at least one shadow ad and the at least one actual ad based on the ad ranking. Further, the at least one shadow ad can be associated with one or more campaign parameters corresponding to a shadow ad campaign. Additionally, the ad request can be received from an online advertising system.

Abstract: IP address-user number estimates may be determined by accepting IP address usage information associating various IP addresses with various client identifiers, and generating an estimate of a number of users for at least one of the IP addresses using the IP address usage information. If the client identifiers include cookies, the estimate of a number of users for at least one of the IP address can be generated by determining a number of cookies for the at least one IP address for a given period of time, and multiplying the number by a second, predetermined, ratio of a number of users per cookie for the given time period. Other user identifying information includes user-agent parameters, browser parameters, and uncookied network traffic. The estimate of a number of users per IP address can be generated by determining a ratio of unique sets of user agent, browser parameters, and/or uncookied network traffic.

Abstract: The serving of advertisements with (e.g., on) audio documents may be improved in a number of ways. For example, a system may (a) accept information defining at least one ad spot associated with at least one instance of an audio document, (b) accept offers to have advertisements served in the ad spot(s), and (c) arbitrate among competing advertisements, using at least the offers, to determine at least one advertisement to be served in that ad spot(s). As another example, a system may (a) accept relevance information for an advertisement, (b) determine at least one audio document using the accepted relevance information, (c) present information about the audio document(s) to an advertiser associated with the advertisement, and (d) accept, from the advertiser, an offer to have its advertisement served with at least one of the audio document(s) accepted.

Abstract: Merchants create ecommerce-enabled ad units advertising items offered by the merchants. The ad units contain functionality enabling customers to purchase the items by interacting with the ad units. The ad units have associated bid prices that the merchants agree to pay for sales through the ad units. The merchants provide the ad units to a broker. The broker publishes the ad units on web pages provided by publishers. A customer receiving a web page interacts with the ad unit to purchase the item. During the interactions, the broker dynamically updates the ad unit to carry out the transaction. The broker collects the bid price from the merchant and shares it with the publisher that published the page on which the ad unit appeared.

Abstract: A demographic attribute value of a sink online document (such as Websites or Web pages) may be determined given a set of users who have visited at least one of the source documents and the sink document, by (a) accepting a value(s) of the demographic attribute, each of which values is associated with a source online document (where each of the source online documents has a value for the demographic attribute and has been visited by at least one user of the given set), (b) determining an estimate of the demographic attribute value of each of the users of the given set using the accepted demographic attribute value of each of the source online documents visited by the user, and (c) determining the demographic attribute value of the sink online document using the determined estimate of the demographic attribute value of each of the users of the given set.

Abstract: One or more keywords and/or information about one or more properties may be accepted, and a set of one or more taxonomy categories may be determined using at least some of the keyword(s) and/or property information and perhaps term co-occurrence clusters. The determined taxonomy categories may be presented to an advertising user as an ad targeting suggestion. Each taxonomy category may have at least one associated property (e.g., Web document), that participates in an advertising network. An advertiser selection of a suggested taxonomy category may be accepted, and the serving of an ad of the advertiser may be targeted to each property associated with the selected suggested taxonomy category. Alternatively, such properties may be presented to an advertising user as an ad targeting suggestion.

Abstract: An online advertising system receives ads and ad exposure goals, such as a desired number of impressions or amount of presentation time, from advertisers. The online advertising system may also receive a time-based advertising purchase. A request for an ad is received for a client, and an amount of exposure is determined for each received ad across a plurality of ad mediums. The ad mediums may include both controlled ad mediums and external ad mediums. The advertising system selects an ad for presentation among the received ads based on the received ad exposure goals associated with the ads and the determined amount of exposure for each ad. The advertising system may select an ad by determining bids for each ad and conducting an auction among the ads. In such an embodiment, the advertising system may determine the bids for ads that have met their ad exposure goals to be zero.

Abstract: An online advertising system receives ads and ad exposure goals, such as a desired number of impressions or amount of presentation time, from advertisers. The online advertising system may also receive a time-based advertising purchase. A request for an ad is received for a client, and an amount of exposure is determined for each received ad across a plurality of ad mediums. The ad mediums may include both controlled ad mediums and external ad mediums. The advertising system selects an ad for presentation among the received ads based on the received ad exposure goals associated with the ads and the determined amount of exposure for each ad. The advertising system may select an ad by determining bids for each ad and conducting an auction among the ads. In such an embodiment, the advertising system may determine the bids for ads that have met their ad exposure goals to be zero.

Abstract: A social networking system selects advertisements for its users using collaborative filtering based on the users' interactions with objects in the social networking system. The objects may be games, pages, groups, deals, messages, content items, advertisements, or any other object with which a user may interact in the system. The system may identify a viewing user's interaction with a first object, determine a second object that is similar to the first object based on interactions of users with both of the objects, and send an advertisement associated with the second object to the viewing user. The system determines a second object based a similarity score between the first object and the second object, which may be a measure of users who have interacted with both objects and may be normalized by a number of user interactions by the users with the objects.

Abstract: One or more keywords and/or information about one or more properties may be accepted, and a set of one or more taxonomy categories may be determined using at least some of the keyword(s) and/or property information and perhaps term co-occurrence clusters. The determined taxonomy categories may be presented to an advertising user as an ad targeting suggestion. Each taxonomy category may have at least one associated property (e.g., Web document), that participates in an advertising network. An advertiser selection of a suggested taxonomy category may be accepted, and the serving of an ad of the advertiser may be targeted to each property associated with the selected suggested taxonomy category. Alternatively, such properties may be presented to an advertising user as an ad targeting suggestion.

Abstract: A system environment supporting one or more advertisers and one or more ad publishers provides a means of sharing user-targeted advertisement. One or more hashing modules in the system environment provide the advertisers and ad publishers a means of sharing this information without revealing a user's personally identifiable information (PII). If a lossy hash is chosen, then an advertiser can communicate targeted advertisements to an ad publisher without revealing any PII to the ad publisher that the ad publisher did not already know.

Abstract: A social networking system maintains profile information about a subject user and about a viewing user. The viewing user requests a page of information about the subject user (e.g., a profile page) from the social networking system. The social networking system determines a set of interests or other information about the subject user based on the subject user's profile information. One or more ads are selected based at least in part on the set of determined interests or other information about the subject user. The profile page of the subject user is generated, where the profile page comprises profile information about the subject user along with the selected ads. The profile page of the subject user is then sent to the viewing user for display.

Abstract: A system determines a number of times that clients access a group of documents associated with a web site or a group of web sites. At least one document in the group of documents includes at least one advertisement. The system further determines a percentage of client views for an advertiser or an advertising network across the web site or group of web sites based on the determined number of times.

Abstract: In particular embodiments, a user enters a code received at a point of sale identifying a node on a social network representing the point of sale. Upon entering the code into a mobile application, the application requests the user to identify other users that referred the user to the point of sale. Upon selecting one or more referrers, the social networking system applies one or more policies to the selected referrers. In particular embodiments, the social networking system integrates with online merchants, and prompts a user to select users or nodes that referred the user to the site or the specific product. In particular embodiments, the social networking system tracks the value of every single transaction, and may generate a list of the top ten value generators for a given node.

Abstract: Methods, apparatuses and systems directed to allowing users of a social networking system to promote specific social networking objects in exchange for payment. In particular embodiments, promoted social networking objects may be exported to a sponsored story system for display in a sponsored story area of the promoting user's friends' home pages. In particular embodiments, the promoted social networking objects may be pinned for a predetermined amount of time, clicks, or impressions at the top of the news feeds for the first degree connections of the promoting user.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a system includes one or more computing systems that implement a social networking environment and are operable to provide paid profile personalization functions to users. In particular embodiments, the user may select one or more social networking objects to replace advertisements or other elements that are normally displayed to visitors of the user's profile page that are otherwise controlled by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user may edit elements on their profile page that are otherwise automatically generated and controlled in design and content by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user is billed on a recurring basis for profile personalization.

Abstract: An online publisher provides content items such as advertisements to users. To enable publishers to provide content items to users who meet targeting criteria of the content items, an exchange server aggregates data about the users. The exchange server receives user data from two or more sources, including a social networking system and one or more other service providers. To protect the user's privacy, the social networking system and the service providers may provide the user data to the exchange server without identifying the user. The exchange server tracks each unique user of the social networking system and the service providers using a common identifier, enabling the exchange server to aggregate the users' data. The exchange server then applies the aggregated user data to select content items for the users, either directly or via a publisher.